Artist Biography

Ashtabula-born artist Lainard Bush has returned to Northeast Ohio after years on the West Coast, and has settled in Cleveland.

After earning a BFA Magna Cum Laude at Kent State University, Lainard Bush earned his Master of Fine Arts in 1981 at The San Francisco Art Institute. Originally intent on becoming a filmmaker, his focus switched to painting after an epiphany on a birthday 20 years ago.

Bush has exhibited in galleries and museums since 1988 in cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Aspen, Pittsburgh, Santa Fe, Palm Beach and New York and he (Lainard) is proud to celebrate his return to Cleveland.

The making of Bush’s grid-based work involves a repetitive masking, painting, unmasking and layering of gestural brushstrokes. This process of surface-building, pulling off, and even sanding down, eventually reveals multiple juxtapositions of color and form. The beautiful results evoke comparisons to frames of film, satellite images from space, or superstructures beyond which a partially visible world exists.